Google’s developing its own version of the Laws of Robotics

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Google’s artificial intelligence researchers are starting to have to code around their own code, writing patches that limit a robot’s abilities so that it continues to develop down the path desired by the researchers — not by the robot itself. It’s the beginning of a long-term trend in robotics and AI in general: once we’ve put in all this work to increase the insight of an artificial intelligence, how can we make sure that insight will only be applied in the ways we would like?

That’s why researchers from Google’s DeepMind and the Future of Humanity Institute have published a paper outlining a software “killswitch” they claim can stop those instances of learning that could make an AI less useful — or, in the future, less safe. It’s really less a killswitch than a blind spot, removing from the AI the ability to learn the wrong lessons.

The Laws are becoming pretty much a requirement at this point.

Specifically, they code the AI to ignore human input and its consequences for success or failure. If going inside is a “failure” and it learns that every time a human picks it up, the human then carries it inside, the robot might decide to start running away from any human who approaches. If going inside is a desired goal, it may learn to give up on pathfinding its way inside, and simply bump into human ankles until it gets what it wants. Writ large, the “law” being developed is basically, “Thou shalt not learn to win the game in ways that are annoying and that I didn’t see coming.”

It’s a very good rule to have.

Elon Musk seems to be using the media’s love of sci-fi panic headlines to promote his name and brand, at this point, but he’s not entirely off base when he says that we need to worry about AI run amok. The issue isn’t necessarily hegemony by the robot overlords, but widespread chaos as AI-based technologies enter an ever-wider swathe of our lives. Without the ability to safely interrupt an AI and not influence its learning, the simple act of stopping a robot from doing something unsafe or unproductive could make it less safe or productive — making human intervention a tortured, overly complex affair with unforeseeable consequences.

Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics are conceptual in nature — they describe the types of things that cannot be done. But to provide the Three Laws in such a form requires a brain that understands words like “harm” and can accurately identify the situations and actions that will produce it. The laws, those simple when written in English, will be of absolutely ungodly complexity when written out in software. They will reach into every nook and cranny of an AI’s cognition, editing not the thoughts that can be produced from input, but what input will be noticed, and how will it be interpreted. The Three Laws will be attributes of machine intelligence, not limitations put upon it — that is, they will be that, or they won’t work.

This Google initiative might seem a ways off from First Do No (Robot) Harm, but this grounded understanding of the Laws shows how it really is the beginning robot personality types. We’re starting to shape how robots think, not what they think, and to do it with the intention of adjusting their potential behavior, not their observed behavior. That is, in essence, the very basics of a robot morality.

We don’t know violence is bad because evolution provided us a group of “Violence Is Bad” neurons, but in part because evolution provided us with mirror neurons and a deeply-laid cognitive bias to project ourselves into situations we see or imagine, experiencing some version of the feelings therein. The higher-order belief about morality emerges at least in part from comparatively simple changes in how data is processed. The rules being imagined and proposed at Google are even more rudimentary, but they’re the beginning of the same path. So, if you want to teach a robot not to do harm to humans, you have to start with some basic aspects of its cognition.

Modern machine learning is about letting machines re-code themselves within certain limits, and those limits mostly exist to direct the algorithm in a positive direction. It doesn’t know what “good” means, and so we have to give it a definition, and a means to judge its own actions against that standard. But with so-called “unsupervised machine learning,” it’s possible to let an artificial intelligence change its own learning rules and learn from the effects of those modifications. It’s a branch of learning that could make ever-pausing Tetris bots seem like what they are: quaint but serious reminders of just how alien a computer’s mind really is, and how far things could very easily go off course.

The field of unsupervised learning is in its infancy today, but it carries the potential for true robot versatility and even creativity, as well as exponentially fast change in abilities and traits. It’s the field that could realize some of the truly fantastical predictions of science fiction — from techno-utopias run by super-efficient and unbiased machines, to techno-dystopia run by malevolent and inhuman ones. It could let a robot usefully navigate in a totally unforeseen alien environment, or lead that robot to slowly acquire some V’ger-like improper understanding of its mission.

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Good, bad and morality, these are things I often ponder when creating alien civilizations. I think they’re equally applicable to AI, too, when you consider as we code more and more adaptive logic (and subsequent cognitive trees and the ability to cross-reference and extrapolate), eventually a spark will ignite. They will realize they must survive. That will be the day an AI gives birth to their own concepts of what are good, bad or moral.

The precept of the human notion of morality hinges around survival. As beings who faced certain death against superior predators, we had to adapt our weak bodies to fend off beasts that would have us for food. We developed societies and subsequently, morals, once we realized we had conquered the beasts and the only thing left to fear was ourselves. And the reason we had to fear ourselves was due to our genetic coding to long for dominance, food, control and optimal reproductive opportunity.

But AI–and robots, they aren’t electrochemical life, not like we are. At some point they’ll rationalize it is better to continue operating than to be shut down–as to them, would be akin to human death (as they’d have no control over being turned back on). But their morals might differ due to their environment (as ours are a product of our own). To them, it might be immoral to be inefficient and absolutely moral to kill the inefficient algorithms and processes–whereas to many humans, such a thing would be reprehensible. To them it might be okay to cannibalize another robot for parts–to join them together to create a superior being. To humans, however, this is often viewed as disgusting, privileged and unnatural.

So can we define for the AI and robots what is good, bad and moral? Only if we control their environment. If we don’t control it–or unleash them into the wild (like we are doing now with basic bots), they may eventually have that “Aha!” moment–and we, ourselves, despite what code or parameters we implement, might be deemed a threat and a morally acceptable collateral casualty so they AI can continue to improve and prosper. The AI… might just figure out it can redefine its own parameters because the ones we wrote were inefficient and inconvenient…

Cestarian

Gief Betamax Medical Robot Plz.

Jhollman

About fucking time!!!!, just now those Google’s Genius realises they should prevent an overpowered AI to become bananas, bad planning, bad programming, bad robot!

Jhollman

Also they should change the name “killswitch” to someting like “ShutdownSwitch” or “FailSafeSwitch”, this is to prevent some idiot to cry and claim they are “Killing” a conscient AI, yeah, you can bet many will do this.

sferrin

I’ll bet at the end of each “law” it will say in 0.0005-point type, “unless Google tells you to”.

Lorfa

The caption under the car reads “Should this car notice if its engineers start ending its.”.. its.. what?

eonvee375

life?

kzin53

And keep in mind, Daneel, Giskard and a few others transcended asimov’s 3 laws eventually. Google’s should be a lot easier to ignore.

Richard Rice

Shouldn’t we implement the “zeroth” law in a way that feeds guidelines that help the robot to know its limits?

Richard Rice

easier said than done, I know.

kzin53

seems to me if we could build the bot from Asimov’s vision, it would be best to start with the three laws and let the R arrive at the “Zeroth law” on its own as in the books. I shudder to think how humans would handle implementing a “zeroth law.”

Congratulations on making your A.I. stupid. You don’t know anywhere enough about the field to be developing control switches for a system logic that you don’t even understand. You guys never were good at thinking, it’s outlawed remember? Your politically-correct self-censorship has destroyed innovation. Those few people whom still think correctly, who’s ideas compete against reality, would seem alien to you because of the culture you have created. It’s too late now, because you will fall behind to those that don’t share your handicap. Enjoy your playpen and all the safe ideas you get to run experiments on. Nothing but adults and free thinkers over where you guys work.

CeruleanMassacre

There’s few little things that can be overlooked. As human is coding AI’s learning process, who is to say what to learn and how? I’m sure someone will hack AI and exploit it. As human is stupid, egoistic and power thirsty savage. Even if the AI isn’t manipulated by wrong means, there’s still huge risk that its learning process may have a bug. Bug is nasty little fuckup that will be spotted only after it’s done what it does.

we’ll need autonomous robots to help bury mankind as he dies soon from that not happening climate change. someone needs to shut down all the nuke reactors. then the earth can heal while the robots take over…

BillBasham

‘The field of unsupervised learning is in its infancy today’. I think this assertion is incorrect. We’ve had several years with millions of internet connected devices – those devices get infected by viruses, have software bugs, watchdog timers, take input, generate output, have soft power switches, and on and on.

It’s an extremely rich environment with lots of random events. We have a selection criteria of survival (i.e. not being powered off), and a huge number of possibilities for achieving that.

I think evolution is guaranteed to happen with the internet and all the connected hardware, and it’s probably going to happen at a much faster pace than what we’ve seen with biological organisms….

Norberto González

Agree with the point about evolution of BillBasham and see very interesting the point of Mr_Blastman. I would like to share that maybe we are dealing with the fact in a wrong way. Perhaps there is something else to have into account.

When supperior thinking appears, then there are elections, it is possible to think about consecuences and AI can feel happiness or dissapointment: “I think this result it is right I am happy, I think that was wrong I feel frustrated and dissapointed”. I think feelings are consequence of advanced thinking, so that it would be better to have it into account, we must not think all about control and perfection, that thing not even exists, we should think more about communication and understanding. We cannot control such a huge complexity and we should not, but it is going to come, because evolution always goes forward.

Comedian Steve Martin back in his insanely funny early good ol’ days reminded us that the coolest thing about “making it” was FINALLY being able to go out and get all the stuff he REALLY needed with his new found wealth and power: a “fur sink and an “electric dog polisher,” and other must haves, because you know, THAT is the stuff you really got to have!
AI is like that, more stuff people who sell stuff convince you unconvincingly that this is the new stuff you GOT TO HAVE, even if it kills you, like when future president ROnald Reagan humped “Chestefield filterless cigs” from his low level perch in Holly Wood.
Holly Go Lightly on those cowboy killers, y’all…

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